This invention relates to a method for protecting a pipe, a pipeline or a cable buried in the ground. This invention applies generally to the protection of any object of this type, of elongated form and buried in the ground. These objects are covered by the terms pipe and cable.
Safety standards recommend protecting, in particular, electric cables by surrounding them with sand or very fine sand. This requires, in particular, the removal of excavated earth, the supply, storage and removal from storage of large quantities of high-quality and expensive materials, of sand or very fine sand type. The removal and supply require the use of numerous lorries, which gives rise to nuisance and noise, particularly in towns, as well as pollution.
Research carried out to date on replacing filling with sand or very fine sand have proved inconclusive. Thus, the use of outer shells proves to be expensive, in particular due to numerous cable standards. Similarly, wrapping with an external composite, whilst making it possible to resolve certain drawbacks costs twice as much as filling with very fine sand, can therefore be envisaged only in areas which are difficult to access.
The patent granted under number FR 2 766 634 presents a method for forming a coating made from a particulate material, for example sand or very fine sand, around a pipe or cable, in which a cover is produced in the form of a flexible strip, the cover containing the particulate material between two geotextile sheets, the cover then being folded up around the cable or pipe to be buried. However, such a cover, used over great distances, is bulky and difficult to handle. Moreover, it is difficult to control the distribution of the particulate material in the cover.
The purpose of the invention is to propose a protection method which is economically competitive with simple filling with sand or very fine sand, whilst avoiding, at least to a large extent, the use of sand or very fine sand.